From A People Perspective

Martin Hauck (00:00.11)
with a couple of yeah. Everybody welcome back to another. Everybody welcome back to another episode of from a people perspective today we've got Brandon Simon. Thank you for joining us today.

Brandon Sammut (00:06.12)
Good to be here, Martin.

Martin Hauck (00:17.134)
Um, so, uh, Brandon is the, uh, chief people officer at Zapier and, I'm really excited about today's episode because I'm a Zapier. I would like to call myself a super fan in terms of enthusiasm. However, I am not a super fan in terms of like skillset when it comes to Zapier. So it's like love all the fun things that it's done for me and what I've been able to accomplish.

So this I'm probably gonna geek out a couple times in this episode, so you'll have to forgive me

Brandon Sammut (00:52.875)
Well, bring it on, Martin. The good news is it's never been easier to build with tools like Zapier. So we'll get you hooked up after this.

Martin Hauck (00:57.592)
That's the truth.

Martin Hauck (01:01.166)
Amazing. I would like I would love to dive into how to how you got to, to where you are. But let's let's do a couple icebreakers. As you can tell, behind me music is pretty key for me. If the you know, if you were given some random ultimatum, and there was you could only choose one artist or album to listen to for the rest of time, what musician or artist would you which artist or album would you be listening to?

Brandon Sammut (01:31.976)
Well, you know, I grew up in and around Detroit. so Motown is the genre that comes to mind. And a specific album, it might be something like Stevie Wonder, Superstition, 1972. That is a strong one. And it always reminds me of him.

Martin Hauck (01:46.668)
Okay, that is wrong.

Martin Hauck (01:53.548)
Nice, Didn't so Stevie wonders out of out of that area.

Brandon Sammut (02:00.264)
Stevie Wonder, there are many, many claims to fame for Stevie as a matter of fact, but he's associated with the Motown genre. So I don't remember if he like lived there, did a lot of his like producing and recording there, but Motown claims Stevie.

Martin Hauck (02:08.717)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (02:15.918)
No, nice, All right, midnight snack time. For whatever reason you can't sleep and you've decided to head to the fridge or the pantry. What is the thing that keeps? What is the the guilty pleasure that you're you're chasing after in the middle of the night?

Brandon Sammut (02:32.885)
my gosh, it's like a steaming bowl of rice with chili crisp on top.

Martin Hauck (02:39.094)
Okay, wow. Wow. That's so that there's some production element involved. You're not like just like opening a bag and chugging a bag of &Ms or something like that. It's it's you got to make the rice and you got to put that nice, nice.

Brandon Sammut (02:52.796)
Yeah, well, the good news is we almost inevitably have like rice in the fridge because we use it, we use it all the time and the kids love it. so, you know, presuming that's the case on that particular night. Yeah, I've got to go for rice and chili crisp.

Martin Hauck (02:58.765)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (03:08.376)
So you're not, you're not having to cook the rice. you're like, I'm just going to scoop a bowl and we're just going to call it nice. Okay. Nice. Nice. Rices has been a game changer for her, for our family with the, with the girls, just cause it's just, they love it and it's, it's good for you. It's nice to have those things where it's like good for them. And, but also, something that they enjoy eating. last, last one here. I guess if

you weren't doing what you do now. And you weren't in this space. And you can kind of like go back and you know, those like forks in the road where you're like, I decided to do this instead of this. What would you be doing if you weren't doing what you're doing today?

Brandon Sammut (03:47.971)
If.

I'd be teaching. It's an easy answer for me. The first half of my career was in education, as a matter of fact.

Martin Hauck (03:57.686)
Honestly, you did the thing that you wouldn't be doing now.

Brandon Sammut (04:00.988)
So yes, I got a taste of it right out of college. But I've never been a traditional K through 12 classroom teacher. And so I might do that. But I think the type of teaching that I might gravitate to the most is actually college. First year, freshman, sophomore year, college. are a couple classes I took, a couple professors that left a huge impression on me.

Martin Hauck (04:10.199)
Right.

Brandon Sammut (04:30.568)
big mind expanding moments and that's a big motivator for me. And so the reason I didn't do that earlier in my career is like, I don't think I know anything yet. Especially to teach at that level. It's like one thing if you're teaching like third grade, there's a lot of craft to being a great elementary school teacher from a subject matter perspective, usually kind of have that in hand. But you have to learn a lot of techniques to teach really at any grade, but at the...

Martin Hauck (04:40.842)
That's fair.

Martin Hauck (04:53.272)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (04:57.892)
university level in particular, I always looked at that and was like, I feel like I need to go do some things and learn some things and then maybe later in life I can come back and pay it forward.

Martin Hauck (05:07.0)
That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. I mean, the impression a third grader will receive from like making a big impact on a third grader, is, is possible for sure. Like I remember so-and-so this particular teacher, but I think like you have more operative, there's more swings. There's more at bats in terms of like being able to leave that massive impression you said, and I wanted to quickly double click on that and then love to get into your career journey.

you had some massive mind expanding moments with some of your teachers. Do any of them stand out like any particular lessons or teachers that you'd even call out? And this is what I learned from them.

Brandon Sammut (05:48.511)
Well, I had a.

had a sociology teacher and we read a book by Ali Hashil called The Managed Heart. And The Managed Heart was a two-part ethnography, meaning like she just spent a ton of time with two very specific types of workers. And what she was really interested in is how they, basically the personal coping strategies that they developed to do

their jobs and she picked people into very hard professions. And they were professions back when she wrote the book that were also pretty gendered. So she also wanted to get a sense of like at least traditionally like how men and women, you know, what would they share in common and what maybe is a little bit different and how they cope with very hard jobs. And so the two jobs were flight attendants and bill collectors.

Martin Hauck (06:50.507)
Okay.

Brandon Sammut (06:51.208)
blind attendance and bill collectors. And the reason that was mind expanding for me is like one, it was just like a very specific like set of case studies and how adaptable we are as people. Like how genuinely adaptable, like we are resilient, we are capable. But it's also a reminder too that like a lot of work sucks. a lot of work is just terrible.

Martin Hauck (07:04.161)
Okay.

Martin Hauck (07:13.185)
Hahaha

Brandon Sammut (07:16.486)
Like the fact that people need to develop these like sophisticated coping strategies, like just to make it through a day at work, that really stood out to me. It really kind of ground my gears, honestly. And I think it was part of the motivation for stepping into, you know, people and talent work, you know, much later on.

Martin Hauck (07:32.91)
There was sort of a, at some point I want to have an impact to make sure that even if you're a flight attendant, the culture at the organization is such that it sucks less as a job or the hard parts aren't as hard or is that sort of the thread?

Brandon Sammut (07:52.629)
Yeah, that's exactly right. they're really for me, they've always been like two big motivators for the kind of people and talent work that I get to do today. The first is what we're talking about right now, which is, you know, as Adam Grant would say in his podcast, like, how do we make work suck less? And that's motivating, right? Because when we when we do that in our organizations, two things happen. One, it becomes a source of competitive advantage for our organization. Right. We, you know, we're doing, you know,

You could do XYZ job, software engineer, line cook, auto engineer, whatever the case may be, a lot of different settings. But you're going to come to our company because we're known for being just a great place to do the thing that you do best. So that's interesting at an organization success level. But the other thing, of course, is it has a lot of human impact. It's good for people. It's good for the world when there more organizations.

designing jobs and work so that they are like life-giving, not soul-destroying. So that's the first thing that really motivates me about the work that I get to do. And the second just has to do with how faulty and broken talent systems typically are. So this is the other thing that I really picked up in college that stood out to me is that talent systems and talent markets, and you could consider that as specific as a college admissions process or as

Martin Hauck (09:15.018)
Okay, yeah.

Brandon Sammut (09:15.964)
big as, you know, kind of conventions around how, you know, organizations hire, like how you map people's qualities to job opportunities. It's all like pretty broken and messy even to this day. And it makes sense, right? There's no like no judgment. Like it makes a lot of sense when you think about it because, you know, these talent practices and systems, are designed by humans and humans are messy, as a dear friend says. And

Martin Hauck (09:29.198)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (09:44.198)
those systems are markets, they're also about humans and humans are messy, right? So you have like these just like layers upon layers of like variables and complexity. And so as a result, I think we can all think in our own personal lives of plenty of examples of people in our families or in our friend group or even in our past jobs of like people with a lot of potential, a lot of talent who just aren't well matched, right? They're just mismatched.

Martin Hauck (10:09.71)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (10:12.232)
They have superpowers, but they are in a job that does not allow them to bring those to bear, or those superpowers are not valued in either the work they do or in the organization that they work at. And that's the other thing that really motivates me. It's just like, well, let's make that better. And when I went to grad school back in the day, that's why I went to school, back to school. I went back to school.

and did an MBA and a master's in education. And the reason I did those two together is I was really interested in how technology was going to influence how these talent practices and talent systems work. And I was hopeful that these technologies, now including AI, of course, could be a force for good. Let's make these talent systems work a lot better. And there, too, you get the double benefit, right? Like organizations and economies,

Martin Hauck (10:48.568)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (11:06.169)
know, when and it's better for people too.

Martin Hauck (11:10.978)
the the education path is not one I've like the most interesting thing having had, you know, a bunch of chats with incredible CPOs like yourself is the it's not the linear path like the chief revenue officer started out as a BDR and work their way up kind of deal. Whereas like chief people officers often have this like squiggly line towards

how they got there. And I haven't had too many chats with folks that kind of like started out in education. So maybe just at a high, like, kind of like the high level, give us like the, the quick career path that you had, and maybe some of the moments that leaned into how you got to where you are today.

Brandon Sammut (11:56.102)
Well, you know, let's go back to college then. In my last two years of college, partly to help pay for school, I was a resident advisor or an RA. And what that means is that, you know, as many folks will remember is, you you look after a cohort of students in a dorm or a residence hall. So,

You do various types of programming and education or quasi education with your residents and are also just a mentor or coach and a resource. it's typically, R is typically work with freshmen and sophomores. So it's that super fragile but high opportunity season of someone's life and you can make a huge difference. That was the thesis.

One of the things I noticed when I was doing that work is that I had a blend of students who came from families who had done college, you know, three, four generations deep. And I also had students who were the first in their family to go to college. And I could just see pretty immediately like differences and level of preparedness and just, you know, resources to lean back on when you had a question or things got hard or what have you between, you know, the folks who whose families had benefited, you know, generational benefits of.

you know, folks that had gone to college for many, many generations and the folks who were going to be the first to start that tradition in their family. And that was a really motivating problem space for me. And so after college, I looked all over the country for universities that would give me a chance to do something related to this problem, working with first generation college students. And higher education is pretty credential centric. And so it turns out there weren't a lot of universities that wanted to hire a kid right out

Martin Hauck (13:19.65)
Hmm

Brandon Sammut (13:43.016)
college to like do anything meaningful in this space. Except in Texas, where they do things differently. And there's a great university in Texas, it's part of the UT system called UT Arlington and Arlington, home of the Dallas Cowboys now, by the way, just west of Dallas, between Dallas and Fort Worth. And it's a large, it's a large public university and it has a pretty rich ratio of first generation college students. And they were hiring a residence director.

Martin Hauck (14:09.571)
Hmm.

Brandon Sammut (14:11.848)
for their newest residence hall, it 420 students. And I applied to be their residence director and I got the job. And so, you know, I went to university in Michigan where I grew up. And so the week after I graduated, I packed all of my worldly possessions into my little Honda and I drove, I drove from the Detroit suburbs, it's classic movie scene, down to Arlington, Texas over the course of a couple of days.

Martin Hauck (14:32.105)
the movie scene

Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (14:41.212)
That's where I spent the first two years of my career. And I did do a ton of work with first generation college students. It was, think, one of the hardest jobs I've ever had. Gave me a much deeper appreciation for some of the root causes of what can make college success so tricky for folks who are the first, kind of blazing the trail for their families. And that's how I got started in education.

Martin Hauck (14:59.214)
you

Martin Hauck (15:10.144)
And you spent quite a bit of time.

does the transition from education to like connect the dot between okay I'm gonna jump into to the tech space and to to the people and culture side

Brandon Sammut (15:29.842)
Well, know, education's the business of human potential, It is all about maximizing human potential. And that was what got me into it. And that's what carried me through it. The reason, and so even after the university, I then worked for six years at an organization called Teach for America, as you can tell by the name, like also education related. And after six years at Teach for America, plus the couple of years at UT Arlington,

could just start seeing, or I had a hunch, but like we talked about earlier, like technology could really improve how we help folks realize their potential and how we do that at scale. Like I was always interested in like scale repeatability. Like, you know, we can all think of like individual case studies of success. That's great. Right. I always looked at those and I was like, that's super motivating. But I was like, is that repeatable?

Martin Hauck (16:25.763)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (16:26.536)
Like is there a system underneath that success story that others can kind of graft onto and expect similar levels of success? And in a lot of cases at time I was like, if there's an underlying repeatable motion, I can't see it. So I'm really motivated, how can we do that? And technology was like the one thing I was looking at. like, I think that's the ticket. I think that's the ticket. I think that's how we make this stuff more repeatable and durable. And that's why I went to grad school. So after eight years in education,

I just got married and my wife and I moved from Chicago. We were really living at a time out to California where we are today in the Bay area. I went back to school. I did that MBA. I did a master's in education. It was in Silicon Valley. So just a huge education technology ecosystem. I worked part time during school for an EdTech Venture Fund, which was a great way to just meet a ton of founders and hear about the different

Martin Hauck (17:13.538)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (17:23.784)
talent and education related problems that they were working to improve through technology. And so when I finished grad school, was like, well, I want to work in a software company because after all of this like studying and exposure, was like, my hypothesis was stronger. was like, I do think technology can really make a difference here. I think I'm starting to even see specific examples of that. However, I've never worked in a software company. I don't really understand how a software gets developed, sift, improved or sold.

And I think I really need to understand that if I want to work in technology for the benefit of maximizing human potential. And there the problem was I never worked in a tech company and I hadn't even worked in a for-profit company at that point. And there just were a lot of like, you know, well-known tech companies that wanted to take a chance on someone like me, especially in a customer facing role. And I wanted to be in a customer facing role because I thought I would learn

Martin Hauck (18:14.03)
Right.

Brandon Sammut (18:21.544)
faster how a software company actually works and how customers actually make these decisions about what kind of software they need and why and that kind of thing, rather than being in an internal world. There were some companies that wanted to, you know, were like, oh, Brandon, you have some background in talent or ops or finance. Like, well, we'll hire you into biz ops or we'll hire you into talent. And that would have been fine. Some really great companies, but none of them were customer facing. So I kind of held out.

And I held out for a while. I was probably one of the last folks in my grad school class to get a job. I was, I think, six weeks away from graduation. that's where I started get, don't know, I think it's nerve wracking. Or at least I was stressed out.

Martin Hauck (18:54.744)
find something.

Martin Hauck (19:01.27)
I was gonna say, yeah. That's that nerves can increase, but it sounds like it came from like a place of it was intentional, right? You like good things come to those who wait, or you're being very particular about. And, and you were doubling down, like, I want to learn as much as possible. And your thesis or hypothesis was that the best way to do that would be customer facing.

Brandon Sammut (19:28.776)
That's right. And I'm glad I waited. I had a life-changing conversation with a peer in grad school. And I was just sharing with her what I was looking for. And I'd been holding out for it and wasn't finding anything. And she suggested I look at a very specific company called LiveRamp, which was just transitioning from kind peer startup mode into growth stage. And they were still hiring generalists for customer-facing roles.

And, and well, and she was right to point me in that direction. Cause that's where I, that's where I landed after school. So I was doing sales and BD at live ramp, right out of grad school 2016. And, uh, it was also that same company that a little bit over a year later, uh, asked me to step in and build out the people.

Martin Hauck (20:15.118)
And,

when you're I guess the the age old sort of presumption, at least in talent that I've seen is sort of like, when you hire someone from academia or from like the large corporate space, and they come into the startup tech sector, there's like a huge learning curve for them. I guess I'd be curious to know like, what was the most jarring thing for you or the thing that kind of like, gave you the most whiplash when you when you

went into that space.

Brandon Sammut (20:53.035)
Well, I will tell you, Martin, there's a very specific set of assumptions I had about what it was going to be like. And there were a couple pieces of that where I was dead wrong in the most pleasant way possible. And here's what I mean by that. When I was in my 20s working in education, working in nonprofits, making no money,

Martin Hauck (21:14.542)
Hmm.

Brandon Sammut (21:14.696)
You know, I kind of hold as a badge of honor, right? Like, well, you know, I may not be getting paid a lot and, you know, everything's always resource strapped and we're working real hard over here, but, you we're doing important work and the people are special. The people that do this work are special. These are mission-oriented people. These are people of purpose. These are people with strong personal values and not like the corporate sector, right?

Martin Hauck (21:35.264)
Hmm. Hmm.

Brandon Sammut (21:43.878)
You know, where, you know, people are out to make a buck and I'm sure they're lovely people, but they're not like, you know, just purpose driven people like the folks I get to work with in the nonprofit sector. I, you know, I think you're in your twenties. was, you know, an idiot in many ways. And, you know, it's like, I think I wanted to believe that was true because it kind of was a point of distinction and maybe a way of warranting the trade off I was making financially in particular. It's like, well, at least I'm not doing this like soulless corporate job.

Martin Hauck (22:01.144)
Hmm.

Brandon Sammut (22:13.926)
Well, life is rarely that simple. And one of the biggest pleasant surprises in coming to LiveRamp, my first software company, is it was full of fascinating, values-oriented, kind, and purpose-driven people. Period. Now, what folks cared about and how they articulated that did look and sound a little bit different than when I was working in education. But there was no question that these were my people.

And that was, it wasn't something I expected. It wasn't something I wanted to believe at first, but, I had made a choice to like immerse myself in this sector, like this type of culture and what have you. And again, like not all software companies are like this, but live ramp certainly was just full of, they actually hired for this, the, the talent profile at live ramp, you know, credit to, Oren, the founder and Travis may have ran live ramp for many years was, people who are smart. Nice.

and get things done. Smart, nice, and get things done. It was just absolutely obsessive about all three of these qualities. Would not compromise on any of the three for any hire at the company. And then it was kind of uncanny that not long after I joined, I was accountable for scaling that part of our talent philosophy. So in any case, that was.

Martin Hauck (23:12.438)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (23:34.652)
That was something about transitioning from the nonprofit sector to the software sector that I thought was going to look and feel really different. And it just wasn't.

Martin Hauck (23:44.632)
That's, it's, it's interesting that that through line exists. and that, you know, it's nice to know that those presumptions, you know, can be tested and, and don't necessarily come to, sounds like there's a special culture at live ramp though, as well, like to your point, not, not every company's, gonna, gonna get that. So how, maybe just a quick, intro into like how you ended up at that Zapier.

Brandon Sammut (24:16.872)
Four and a half years ago, there's a search partner, so someone that does these type of chief people officer searches, and his name's Scott Kehoe. And Scott and I had known each other for years. He reached out to me when I was like a fledgling chief people officer. Back when, like I told him, like, hey, I'm like hanging on for dear life over here at LiveRim.

Martin Hauck (24:40.366)
You

Brandon Sammut (24:41.062)
You know, it my first CPO role. I felt very lucky to have it in the first place. Like I'm not, I'm not looking for another job and I don't think anyone want to hire me right now. Anyway, I'm lucky to have the one I have. I don't know anything yet. And, but he was like, Hey, I just, but I just want to meet you. These are like lifelong relationships. I was like, totally. So we had coffee like right by the live ramp office. And he was just a great, he's kind of like one of my archetypes for like a great search partner, as well just any great recruiter, including in-house recruiters.

He played the long game. He was a good listener. He honored where I was at in terms of whether I was looking or not. And he would not put anything in front of me for years. said, I will reach out to you when I am ready to look. And he said, I will absolutely honor that. He said, I wouldn't be doing my job if every once in a while I put in front of you something that based on what we've talked about and what I know about you, I just can't in good conscience not share with you.

With that being said though, he was very selective based on what we talked about. So years and years passed. But in the spring of 2021, and by the way, we would meet up just to swap notes and check in like every six months. And this happened for years. Never put a specific thing in front of me because I wasn't looking. But then in spring of 2021, he did call me with an opportunity. And that opportunity was accurate.

Martin Hauck (26:03.352)
Nice.

Brandon Sammut (26:04.396)
And Scott having known me for years, well, he wasn't wrong, it turns out. We did kind of the classic thing for us. was like, hey, Brandon, I think it's a great company, but at the very least, you should meet Wade. He's one of the co-founders. He's the CEO. And he's hiring for Zapier's first chief people officer. And maybe you should just swap notes on patterns to look for or even referrals or something like that. like you, I knew Zapier before I...

before I had any direct connection to the company. And I knew the product. I definitely wanted to meet Wade. I knew about him. He just seemed like a great leader. So was like, nothing to lose. I should have known better. Because we have this conversation, I'm like, mm, OK. All right, there's something interesting happening here. I think maybe I can be helpful. But I also felt really strongly like I could probably learn a ton in this context. Because this is effectively a seed-strapped company.

product-led growth motion, is different than why we were doing enterprise B2B selling at LiveRamp. And it's also all remote, all remote, and it always had been. So there were like three, at least three, like big, like kind of quirky distinctive things about Zapier that I hadn't operated within before. And that I thought were really interesting to me personally, like especially the remote work piece, like this notion of.

You know, being able to extend these amazing opportunities to folks, brilliant folks anywhere in the world. Like I kind of came back to my personal career mission, right? Of like, how do we build systems and organizations that like better map people's potential to opportunity? I was like, well, here's an organization that intuited that from day one, back when it was considered. Back in 2011, when Zapier got started, starting a company all remote was not considered unconventional. It was considered a stupid way to start a company.

Like you were like, you can't, you cannot succeed. That was the conventional wisdom. And Wade, Mike and Brian, the three co-founders, well, they did it anyway. You know, they were from the American Midwest. They knew that human potential, that there's brilliance everywhere. And they thought, Hey, if we could figure out how to do this remote thing well, like it's going to be a big talent advantage for us because all of our, all of our peers, all of our founder peers, you know, they're mostly hiring out of the Bay area. At least that was true at the time. And so.

Martin Hauck (28:09.422)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (28:24.36)
Well, their peers, you know, zigged, Wade, Mike and Brian zagged, and they built this company all around. And so we have this initial conversation and I'm like, okay, like I'm feeling a a little, little tug. So I keep pulling on the thread and it's looking super interesting, but I have, I have a problem. And the problem is I, I feel a deep sense of loyalty to live ramp, like live ramp and I'm having a lot of fun by the way, like live ramps doing well. I'm having fun. Like it's, by the way, it's a hard year.

Martin Hauck (28:46.456)
Hmm.

Brandon Sammut (28:52.68)
period for chief people offers is 2021. This is the middle of COVID. You closed your offices, like you're trying to figure out when to reopen them. This is also where like the war on talent is really heating up for tech talent, right? Huge surge of additional investment. Everything's up into the right. Stock market's going through the roof. And so it's not an easy time to be a CPO, but I'm having fun at LiveRamp. And LiveRamp changed my life. me a massive opportunity.

Martin Hauck (29:06.232)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (29:22.948)
and I felt very loyal and I felt very loyal in particular to Scott, who was and is the CEO of library. And what, what ultimately got me over the line to Zapier, ironically, you know, there were a lot of things that Wade and the team did that gave me a lot of confidence that I would learn a ton at Zapier and hopefully make a difference. So that, that I didn't question Zapier team was, was amazing about that. But the loyalty thing was the hangup. And so what I did.

is once I felt like I really wanted to like seriously consider coming to Zapier, I talked to the one person, like I had like, you know, talk to the one person, you typically, you know, people would tell you like, don't talk to them for advice. And that was, that was my boss. That was Scott, the CEO of LiveRamp.

Martin Hauck (30:03.983)
Mm. Yeah.

Martin Hauck (30:10.178)
That's a that's a bold move. How did Yeah, I imagine you're gonna tell us but what what was going? Did it feel like a big risk for you to make that? Or was it just a natural progression? I'm like, even though you know, most people would say don't do it. You did it.

Brandon Sammut (30:30.172)
You know, it was scary, but Scott and I had developed a relationship. Like he's a good leader. He's a good listener. You know, it was about as like safe a conversation to have as you can have with your boss about leaving the company for another opportunity. you know, credit to Scott for creating a relationship where I could even contemplate having that conversation. It's still, for me at least, it's still a scary conversation just because

Martin Hauck (30:40.494)
Hmm.

Brandon Sammut (31:00.442)
even if you feel confident in your relationship with your boss, it's just a tough topic. And it was also one that I knew would be a surprise. Because I mean, I wasn't actively looking, so he and I weren't talking about me transitioning or that kind of thing. And so again, this was spring of 2021. I met Scott down in Palo Alto. And again, you can't sit and have a meal or grab a coffee indoors at this point in Northern California. So we grab a coffee, and we're sitting out in the middle of University Avenue.

Martin Hauck (31:09.539)
Right.

Brandon Sammut (31:29.768)
in downtown Palo Alto, like, because they move all the tables. It's slow streets, right? No cars. You're just all the tables for all the restaurants are just in the middle of the street. So we were sitting at this table and I'm telling them about Zapier. I'm telling them about what Wade and I have been talking about. And I'm telling them that I feel really torn and I'm not sure whether to pursue this further. And I wanted to, I wanted to level with him about it. And I wanted his advice. And as I'm telling this story, you know, Scott's starting to smile and I'm

Scott, what are you like? What do you know? What are you? What are you thinking? He's like, gosh, like, I'll never forget this. He's like, Brandon, I hate myself for saying this. He's like, but based on what you're telling me, it might be really good for you to like, go see if there's a there there at Zapier. And I just I just want you to know that, you know, you have my support in doing that, because it might it might be really good for you. And he explained why and he explained why he felt that way. And

know, so Zapier and Wade did their part to create a strong pull to Zapier, but it was really Scott that like freed me up from my my sense of like guilt about leaving LiveRamp to actually, you know, kind of really look into it. And there we were. yeah, fall 2021, did a transition at LiveRamp and started with Wade and the team at Zapier.

Martin Hauck (32:35.47)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (32:48.556)
wild. And and to your point, right, like the amount of like, people from all from everything I've heard so far, I get the sense that like, you're very thoughtful. And like, just like a thoughtful person. But on top of that, like, to your point, loyal, right? Like, these people gave me a shot when they technically shouldn't have or they were hiring their their model, you know, it doesn't necessarily all the other companies are hiring this

type of traditional profile. So that's an extra level of loyalty that you know, people tend to have. But on you layer on top of that the the pandemic and and you're like, okay, this is not exactly the best time to like, make a change. Just period for for all these different reasons. I mean, kudos to Scott and and yourself, right? That's a but kudos to Scott for showing some incredible like leadership and just

kind of setting you free and making it easy for you. and it's been four or five years now at Zapier.

Brandon Sammut (33:56.808)
It has been almost exactly four. I think end of next week will be four.

Martin Hauck (34:01.344)
And then next week, well, happy early four year anniversary at Zapier. What was the scene when you got there and where are you at now?

Brandon Sammut (34:13.83)
Let me pause for just a minute. My daughter's getting ready for school and she's getting just loud enough that we might start getting some background noise. So let me do a quick, yeah, I'll be right back.

Martin Hauck (34:20.044)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, no worries.

Brandon Sammut (35:43.905)
All right, then she she found the script her arms so she was she needed some some daddy cuddles so Yeah Yeah, she's good

Martin Hauck (35:48.167)
no, some TLC. It's okay though.

That's good. Yeah, no.

Yeah, just coming up to coming up to four years and in terms of what can you kind of quickly set the scene on what things were like when you got there and where things are at today from a PNC perspective.

Brandon Sammut (36:20.104)
You know, back in fall of 2021, again, Zapier hadn't had like a dedicated or a standalone head of people or a chief people officer in this case at the time, but it had invested a ton in the people team. you know, from a, you know, had a recruiting organization, an L &D organization, people business partners, you know, the whole deal. It had all been reporting up until that time to

Martin Hauck (36:34.179)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (36:47.784)
our former CFO, super talented leader was managing to do all the finance, all the people, which is very common in your earlier stage to have these kind of blended roles under some very talented senior leaders. And as Zapier was growing, they decided to split it out. so I come in and this is a remarkable team and many of the folks on Zapier's people team back in 2021, they're still here.

different jobs, expanded jobs, the whole deal. But there's a lot of talent on the team. The biggest hotspot when I arrived was the recruiting team. Again, this was in the middle of the war on talent. The head of recruiting had left. And we were just, I looked and we were vulnerable. We hadn't like updated our comp bands recently. You know, the only job that was in higher demand than engineers were people that could hire engineers, like recruiters and technical recruiters, especially in ours were getting like

Martin Hauck (37:41.774)
you

Brandon Sammut (37:44.52)
you know, just picked off one by one by one. And we were meaningfully behind on Zapier's overall hiring plan as a result of all of this. And in fact, you know, for a variety of reasons, Zapier hadn't hit its hiring plan in several years. And it didn't look like we were going to hit it in 2021 either because of all the, you know, kind of comings and goings on the recruiting team. But what gave me lot of optimism is that Wade cared a ton about hiring.

Martin Hauck (37:53.176)
Mm.

Brandon Sammut (38:13.306)
a ton and spent a lot of time there personally. It was so important that in the absence of a recruiting leader and while we were rebuilding the team before I arrived, Wade was running the team. Wade was running the team and said, this is just too important, you know, not to have, you know, someone paying attention to it every day and I'm going to do it. And so he and I kind of tag teamed the rebuild of the recruiting team in my first hundred days or so we hired a really talented head of talent, Tracy St. Deke, who's still here today.

Martin Hauck (38:24.578)
Wild.

Brandon Sammut (38:42.952)
Um, and, uh, kind of filled out the rest of the roster and got after that hiring plan. And then 2022 was the first year that Zapier hit its hiring plan in, you know, in recent memory. Um, and, uh, we have a pretty, pretty solid hiring engine, uh, today, you know, with credit to, to wait in the team. So that was something, you know, a couple other things we did in the early days, um, Zapier didn't have a broad based equity program until, uh, Q1 of 2022 and

Martin Hauck (39:08.11)
Hmm.

Brandon Sammut (39:12.264)
suit cam or general counsel and a few others had been working on it throughout 2021. So I got to come in and just kind of helped get that over the finish line. That was a big moment for the company because in 2020, 2021, Zapier was just clearly becoming a valuable company and Wade Mike and Brian wanted to make sure that everyone who worked at Zapier had, you know, kind of a stake in the company's future as a result. And so we did that as well. That that has been a big deal for

Martin Hauck (39:29.838)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (39:41.896)
for us and for the team. And then last but not least in early 2022, we just kind of took a look at Zapier's mission or customers, like what we're trying to do in the world. I Zapier's whole mission is to make automation work for everyone. And when you think about like what Zapier does for organizations or why folks use things like Zapier, a lot of it's about maximizing human potential, supercharging human.

Martin Hauck (39:56.139)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (40:08.688)
output, delivery, impact, productivity, whatever you want to call it. And, you know, we look inside the company and we say, how should the company's mission and what we're doing externally with customers influence our talent strategy? And in Zapier's case, there was a really clear answer for us, which is that, well, you know, if, if a lot of the impact we're having in the world is supercharging human potential and productivity, then that should be the anchor of our talent strategy internally as well. And so

Um, you know, and increasingly these days, what I'm about to say is, more common at the time. There were only a couple of organizations I could find that were doing what I'm about to describe, but we, basically began running a talent density strategy. And what that means for us is what levers can we pull from hiring to job design, to how we use technology, you know, including things like Zapier, um, to make sure that, you know, if you're in.

a sales role, a customer support role, an engineering role that you are unusually productive at Zapier compared to doing that same job at just some other tech company. Like that, that unusual degree of per person or per hour per whatever the unit is productivity. Like that's our core sense of, of talent density. And we just started getting really interested in like, how do we measure that? How do we boost that over time? And you know, a lot of what we've been working on.

Martin Hauck (41:11.107)
Mm.

Brandon Sammut (41:34.49)
over the last four years or so has been in service of growing talent density while also of course making Zapier a great place to work.

Martin Hauck (41:41.846)
And am I understanding it correctly in the sense that this is like a very strategic exercise in sort of like dogfooding, like just using your own tool? Or is it above and beyond like using Zapier to make your team more effective as well?

Brandon Sammut (41:58.632)
That's certainly, that is absolutely part of it. You know, some of the biggest levers we have found to grow talent density actually starts with hiring. So to being like unusually clear eyed about what qualities enable someone to be unusually successful at Zapier, especially relative to like, it's like, what, what's an ingredient for success at Zapier that's different than the typical formula at just some other software company.

So I got really interested in that. How do we measure that? And started running a quality of hire effort to really in those things down and then build the related assessments into how we hire. So just trying to build some repeatable notions based on the answer to that question. And certainly, and especially the last two years or so, using more of our own product to build this company has been a huge way to both

growth productivity slash talent density, but also to just deepen customer empathy and our rate of product improvement. It's like some of the Zapier should be its own best case study for how you use Zapier to help people and organizations succeed. back in 2021, 2022, even 2023, I don't know that it was obvious. I think you'd have to like...

make a pretty fine grained case as to like why that would have been true at the time. And we're like, well, it needs to be an obvious case. Like people need to be looking from afar, like a mile away and being like, my goodness, like that organization is using automation. And then of course now AI, in ways that we want to emulate, like that's an amazing case study. Let's go figure out like how Zap you're doing that.

Martin Hauck (43:30.947)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (43:44.012)
Yeah, no. Just a quick time check for you and I'll stitch this out but just wanted to be respectful of your time. Do you have a hard stop in seven minutes or?

Brandon Sammut (43:54.056)
Let's take a look.

Brandon Sammut (43:58.344)
probably do. But I can, you know what I can do? Let's take, let's do, if it's helpful, let's do another 15 total, so 10 after the hour, and I'm going to email my next meeting right now.

Martin Hauck (44:10.38)
We can I can actually turn this into like if you're okay with it just like a to be continued kind of piece if you if you like like we release what we've got now and and then do that or yeah we can go long now or I just wrap it up.

Brandon Sammut (44:25.308)
Yeah, you tell me what do you think, what, yeah, well, what do you think would be more impactful for, you know, for you, for your listeners?

Martin Hauck (44:32.331)
Well, I mean, what I really love about what we've done today is really dug into your, so I, I don't have like a formal version of it, but like the road to CPO is sort of a series I've been wanting to do. And this covers that, but then by nature of Zapier and, and, and being the CPO there, there's a million questions I have on like how Zapier is using, the tool for the people.

culture side or even just how it permeates through the rest of the organization. And I just know that we're not going to cover that in seven minutes, let alone 15. So yeah, if you're cool with it, I'd love to kind of maybe zone in on like, what are you keeping an eye out on the in the future, like just general for for the organization or what's top of mind and we can cut it at that. And then just agree.

if you're okay with it to do like a second version where it's like, let's get into the nitty gritty kind of deal.

Brandon Sammut (45:32.252)
Good. I think that sounds like a good recipe. Let's point on that.

Martin Hauck (45:35.288)
Cool. Awesome. Love it. So in terms of where Zapier is now, I guess, you know, as we kind of like wind down this version of the conversation and I have a million other questions and I kind of want to get into the nitty gritty, but I know that's not gonna serve us to, it'll be a disservice if we don't give that conversation enough time.

we're what's the most exciting part like there's this intersection of obviously my personal belief is automation isn't being used enough in the first place and everybody's just kind of distracted with AI and they're kind of synonymous to a certain extent but I'm just curious what's what's your lens and what are you excited about on on how how companies can be using automation and how maybe even Zapier can be using automation

just from your perspective and hopefully we can double click on that next time we chat.

Brandon Sammut (46:38.259)
It's a good question, Martin. So I'll say two things in particular. The first is, yes, people use automation and AI synonymously. They're complementary. And we use a lot of some of the most interesting workflows that we use on our people team blend automation, which is typically deterministic. And what I mean by that is it works the same way every time.

Martin Hauck (46:57.496)
Thank you.

Brandon Sammut (47:01.128)
And AI, which has its own superpowers, but can also produce varying results, even with the same prompt and data, just depending on what's going on with the underlying LLM. But having those two capabilities in-house and making it easy for people to build with them has been incredibly powerful. And in fact, that's exactly what Zapier now offers to customers. So Zapier started as an automation platform. And now...

is an AI orchestration platform. And what that means, AI orchestration is a single platform where folks without having to know how to can build across the whole range of deterministic automation, AI automations, all the way to pure AI agents, just based on the job to be done. So I go to a single place, there are different tools for different jobs, but you can build them all in a single platform with the same

Martin Hauck (47:33.08)
then.

Brandon Sammut (48:00.274)
kind of observability, security, admin controls that you would hope for in an enterprise builder platform. So that's what Zapier is about these days and we use it a ton naturally inside the organization. So plus one to that, just in terms of thinking about like, how automation AI come together to solve real problems. And when we talk next, we can talk about specific examples of that.

Now, that's just the first piece. The second piece, and maybe the thing that I think is understated, is that using automation and AI within organizations is actually mostly a people problem, not a technology problem. Now, by the way, I don't want to understate the technology puzzles around the thoughtful use of automation AI, because there are plenty. And we can talk about that next time, too.

Martin Hauck (48:28.055)
Right.

Martin Hauck (48:42.958)
Hmm

Brandon Sammut (48:54.076)
But there is another side to that coin. And if you forced me to choose, which side of the coin is the bigger one, even just by a little fraction, would say the people and talent and culture aspect of this is outsized. And this has been true of any type of organizational transformation. And a lot of organizations right now are right on the early chapters of an AI in automation transformation.

Martin Hauck (49:19.981)
Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (49:20.764)
and it's like their peers are doing it. It's like no one wants to be left behind. Everyone's trying to figure out what it means. There's a lot of talk about tools, like which model should we use or what should our AI security controls be? And those are all worthy questions. But the organizations that seem to be making the most durable progress here are the ones that are paying equal attention to what's the why? Why is this important for our organization? Why now? What's the shape of it?

for our organization, like what's the opportunity and why, who are the stakeholders? So it's like, of course we want the company to be more successful as a result. Hopefully we can do something here that's good for customers. It's really important to tell the story of why the people doing the work in the company, the employees stand to benefit from this transformation as well. And all of that ends up needing to be like.

Martin Hauck (49:49.966)
Hmm.

Brandon Sammut (50:16.296)
pretty bespoke to the organization, even if the underlying reasons aren't super different than their peers. The way you talk about it, the mythology you create around it, the examples of excellence and wins that you tell, those need to look and sound like very authentic to each organization. So there's, you know, it's great to draw inspiration from like other CEOs or how companies are talking about it, but there's no substitute for putting it in your own words. And then that transformation.

that AI transformation basically becomes a organizational health check for the company. Because the things that enable people to feel capable, safe, using AI in an organization are things that we've always cared about in people and talent work. Psychological safety, trust in management, confidence with experimentation, right? What if I try something with AI and it doesn't work?

Martin Hauck (51:13.73)
Hmm. Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (51:14.6)
You know, if I, if I share what I've learned, is that like a good thing or like, I going to get, if if I, if I put myself out there, right. Like, and it doesn't work. Like, am I going to get punished? Right. Or like, how does that work? And these are, these are tests of company culture. And so one of the biggest things that, that I've really has been really been reinforced for me in the AI work that Zapier does internally in the kind of wayfinding that we're doing with so many of our customers is that this is as much a culture and talent and leadership.

Martin Hauck (51:17.676)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Brandon Sammut (51:43.29)
transformation as it is a technology transformation. But it's also a little bit of like what's old is new again. Because I think that reality that all of these transformations are at least as much about like talent, leadership and culture as they are about whatever the new technology is like, that's a tale as old as time. I think that's always been true.

Martin Hauck (52:04.206)
Well, I could not have queued up the follow up to this episode better. So thank you. think, yeah, I'm excited to have that next conversation and thank you so much for sharing your journey. It's definitely inspirational. And, and, I hope that, the listeners listening are excited for the next as excited about the next episode as I am, and as inspired by, your story today. So thanks so much for, for doing this, Brendan really appreciate it.

Brandon Sammut (52:31.93)
stuff, Marin. I look forward to part two.

Martin Hauck (52:34.058)
Awesome.